AFT-NH Testimony on HB 1691
From Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH
Thank you, Chairman Ladd and Members of the House Education Committee, for reading my testimony.
My name is Debrah Howes. I am the president of the American Federation of Teachers -NH.
AFT-NH represents 3,700 teachers, paraeducators and school support staff, public service employees and higher education staff across the Granite State. We work with close to 30,000 students in public schools across the state, all them entitled to a robust public education, which is their constitutional right as Granite State citizens.
I write to express the overwhelming opposition of my members to HB 1691. The global problems that we are experiencing in New Hampshire and across the country will be solved by the students within our schools today. We must ensure that every child has a complete, robust, and engaging curriculum that builds their minds, bodies, and characters. All public-school students deserve to learn in their neighborhood public schools the academic content, problem- solving, critical thinking and teamwork skills that will allow them to succeed in a 21st century economy as global citizens. To do anything less would be selling the more than 160,000 Granite State students who rely on public schools short. Indeed, it would be selling our future short.
Yet, instead of rising to this challenge, some New Hampshire politicians are considering House Bill 1691, a bill that drastically narrows what public schools would be required to teach to four core domains: English Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. If this bill passes, public school students across the state could find classes in computer science and digital literacy, personal finance literacy, engineering and technology, world languages, music and art education, as well as physical education, health, and wellness treated as nonessential luxuries which are no longer part of a state mandated “adequate education.” Yet these are all subjects and content areas that are instrumental to the academic and personal development of students and the economic and technological development of our state as part of a global economy.
This bill is a duplicate of the bill that NH Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut advocated for just two years ago calling it a bold step that will allow public schools to focus on finally closing the achievement gap. How does creating a bare bones curriculum and telling our students you aren’t worth investing in close the achievement gap? It is disappointing because it will increase the already large equity gap between public school students whose families who can afford to offer enrichments beyond those four core domains and those whose families can’t. If HB1691 passes, it will leave so many children across the Granite State with a bare-bones, impoverished education. The Commissioner says that these other areas are still important and can be offered separately or integrated into core subjects. But we all know and have seen what happens when certain subjects had added emphasis because they were required to be measured on state assessments such as with No Child Left Behind. Soon focusing on those subjects, particularly in our chronically underfunded public schools, crowded out almost everything else. On both a state and local level, taxpayers prioritize funding what is tested and cut what isn’t. Tested subjects quickly become the only focus.
As any teacher knows, it is often those subjects that HB1691 considers “extras” that keep a student engaged in learning throughout the school day. We all have our stories of a child who becomes more successful in core academic subjects after something in one of those “less essential” areas caught their attention and lit up their mind. For one boy I knew it was drawing. When he learned in Art class how to draw with perspective to make things “look real,” that changed his outlook on school. He got a taste for learning something he enjoyed and found that he enjoyed learning. Suddenly the things he was picturing in his brain he could draw on paper, and they looked how he imagined them! He was so pleased with himself that he wanted to draw all the time. This helped him open up and communicate more. He could draw pictures about what happened in the books he read, and then write about it, so it improved his writing. He showed more persistence in working on his math, especially when he could draw his solution, and then label it with equations. His academics improved because of his love of art.
This bill would relegate a rich curriculum and deep learning opportunities to a privilege that would be open only to well-off students, leaving the majority of New Hampshire students who rely on a public-school education with only the “basic, no-frills” education that the Commissioner apparently believes they deserve. AFT-NH members emphatically reject this premise. Our state needs to re-focus on supporting innovative approaches to curriculum and instruction by continuing to require the content that would greatly improve students’ access to the knowledge and skills they need to be successful. All children deserve that kind of education. Two years ago, the legislature and this committee saw this through this thinly veiled attempt to weaken out public schools and expanded the core subject areas.
We urge you to once again reject this radical attempt to slash education in New Hampshire and vote Inexpedient to Legislate on HB 1691.